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The Institute for Research on Innovation and Science is accepting applications for its 2018 IRIS Awards, an annual program that supports researchers who use IRIS data to address questions about the social and economic returns of investments in research. Through the program, IRIS seeks to enable fundamental research on the results of public and private investments that support discovery, innovation, and education on the campuses of U.S. universities. Up to $15,000 for dissertations awards and up to $30,000 for early career and established researcher awards will be awarded to the recipient's institution. Funds can be used for personnel (e.g., research assistance, salaries, or stipend if recipient is a student), equipment, supplies, travel (may include travel mandated by the award), and other expenses (e.g., professional development and training). Awards may include 15 percent overhead or indirect costs to be paid as a part of the award total. Proposals must emphasize the use of IRIS data in projects that address open issues in the study of science and technology and science policy. Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to new methods to estimate social and economic return on investment for funding from various sources (federal, philanthropic, industrial, and institutional); the relationship between research training, career outcomes, and the downstream productivity of employers; the relationship between different funding sources and mechanisms and the structure and outcomes of collaboration within and across campuses; the distinctive contribution university research makes to regional economic development and resilience; and the effects different funding sources and mechanisms have on research teams and the productivity and efficiency of the academic research enterprise as a whole

The mission of ARPA-E is to identify and fund research to translate science into breakthrough energy technologies that are too risky for the private sector and that, if successfully developed, will create the foundation for entirely new industries. Successful projects will address at least one of ARPA-E?s two Mission Areas: 1. Enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in: a. reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; b. reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and c. improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and 2. Ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies. This program seeks to support fund the development of bioconversion technologies that transform our ability to convert methane into liquid fuels. Of interest are biological routes to improve the rates and energy efficiencies of methane activation and subsequent fuel synthesis, as well as approaches to engineer high-productivity methane conversion processes. Within this program, three technical categories are considered: (1) high-efficiency biological methane activation, (2) high-efficiency biological synthesis of liquid fuels, and (3) process intensification approaches for biological methane conversion. The potential impacts of this FOA includes increasing the economic and energy security of the nation through production of low-cost, liquid transportation fuels with lower emissions than petroleum-based fuels.

Under this FFO, EDA solicits applications from applicants in rural and urban areas to provide investments that support construction, non-construction, technical assistance, and revolving loan fund projects under EDA's Public Works and EAA programs. Grants and cooperative agreements made under these programs are designed to leverage existing regional assets and support the implementation of economic development strategies that advance new ideas and creative approaches to advance economic prosperity in distressed communities. 

The goals of the Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Processes and Systems (RIPS) solicitation are (1) to foster an interdisciplinary research community that discovers new knowledge for the design and operation of infrastructures as processes and services  (2) to enhance the understanding and design of interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) and processes that provide essential goods and services despite disruptions and failures from any cause, natural, technological, or malicious, and (3) to create the knowledge for innovation in ICIs to advance society with new goods and services. The objectives of this solicitation are: Create theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary computational models of interdependent infrastructure systems, processes and services, capable of analytical prediction of complex behaviors, in response to system and policy changes. Synthesize new approaches to increase resilience, interoperations, performance, and readiness in ICIs. Understand organizational, social, psychological, legal, political and economic obstacles to improving ICI's, and identifying strategies for overcoming those obstacles. The RIPS solicitation seeks proposals with transformative ideas that will ensure ICIs services are effective, efficient, dependable, adaptable, resilient, safe, and secure.  Successful proposals are expected to study multiple infrastructures focusing on them as interdependent systems that deliver services, enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in infrastructure research.  Proposals that do not broadly integrate across the cyber-physical, engineering and social, behavioral and economic (SBE) sciences may be returned without review. 

High Intensity Thermal Exchange Through Materials and Manufacturing Process (HITEMMP) Agency Overview: The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to: "(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in- (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies." ARPA-E issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under the programmatic authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16538.

The Fellowship Program expects to award two new Ph.D. Fellowships each year to students who are interested in careers related to the development and implementation of quantitative methods for assessing the economics of the conservation and management of living marine resources. Fellows will work on thesis problems of public interest and relevance to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the guidance of NMFS mentors at participating NMFS Science Centers or Offices. The NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship in Marine Resource Economics meets NOAA's Healthy Oceans goal of "Marine fisheries, habitats, biodiversity sustained with healthy and productive ecosystems." The expected annual award per Fellow will be $46,000 (Federal plus matching funds), which is funded jointly by NOAA Fisheries and Sea Grant.

This CRISP 2.0 solicitation responds both to national needs on the resilience of critical infrastructures and to increasing NSF emphasis on transdisciplinary research. In this context, the solicitation is one element of the NSF-wide Risk and Resilience activity, with the overarching goal of advancing knowledge in support of improvement of the nation's infrastructure resilience. The devastating effects of recent disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have underscored that a great deal remains to be done. In addition, CRISP 2.0 is aligned with the NSF-wide frontier thinking on convergence, characterized as "deep integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks for addressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities". The Directorate of Engineering and the Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences therefore jointly invest in the CRISP 2.0 solicitation to stimulate the integration of engineering, and social, behavioral and economic sciences to foster new paradigms and domains in interdependent critical infrastructures.

The goal of the NSF Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program solicitation is to accelerate the creation of the scientific and engineering foundations that will enable smart and connected communities to bring about new levels of economic opportunity and growth, safety and security, health and wellness, and overall quality of life. This goal will be achieved through integrative research projects that pair advances in technological and social dimensions with meaningful community engagement. For the purposes of this solicitation, communities are defined as having geographically-delineated boundaries-such as towns, cities, counties, neighborhoods, community districts, rural areas, and tribal regions-consisting of various populations, with the structure and ability to engage in meaningful ways with proposed research activities. A "smart and connected community" is, in turn, a community that synergistically integrates intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, or travel within it. A proposal for an S&CC Integrative Research Grants must include the following: Integrative research that addresses the technological and social dimensions of smart and connected communities; Meaningful community engagement that integrates community stakeholders within the project; A management plan that summarizes how the project will be managed across disciplines, institutions, and community entities; and An evaluation plan for assessing short-, medium-, and long-term impacts of the proposed activities.

Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) Agency Overview The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to: "(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in- (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies."

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program stimulates technological innovation in the private sector by strengthening the role of small business concerns in meeting Federal research and development needs, increasing the commercial application of federally supported research results, and fostering and encouraging participation by socially and economically disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses. The SBIR program solicits proposals from the small business sector consistent with NSF's mission. The program is governed by Public Law 112-81 (SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011). A main purpose of the legislation is to stimulate technological innovation and increase private sector commercialization. The NSF SBIR program is therefore in a unique position to meet both the goals of NSF and the purpose of the SBIR legislation by transforming scientific discovery into both social and economic benefit, and by emphasizing private sector commercialization. Accordingly, NSF has formulated broad solicitation topics for SBIR that conform to the high-technology investment sector's interests. The topics are: Biological and Chemical Technologies (BC) Education Applications (EA) Electronics, Information and Communication Technologies (EI) Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, and Manufacturing (NM)

The lack of logistics systems capable of handling and delivering sufficiently high tonnage year-round volumes of high quality feedstocks to support the rapid escalation of cellulosic biofuels production has been identified as a significant barrier to the expansion of a sustainable domestic biofuels industry. In particular, biomass physical and chemical quality parameters have repeatedly been identified as significant challenges to the smooth operation and economic viability of biorefineries. This FOA will focus on developing and demonstrating strategies, equipment, and rapid analytical methods to manage feedstock quality within economic constraints throughout the feedstock supply chain. The main effort in Proposals must be directed toward full-scale demonstration of integrated feedstock supply chain systems that can deliver the volume of high quality, affordable, high impact feedstocks required by commercial biorefineries over a significant geographic area in the United States. DOE plans to support the increased production of high volumes of sustainably produced domestic biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks by seeking Proposals to design new systems or adapt existing systems to handle industrial scale volumes of cellulosic feedstocks from the harvest point to the throat of the biorefinery reactor.

Successful projects will address at least one of ARPA-E?s two Mission Areas: 1. Enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in: a. reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; b. reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and c. improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and 2. Ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies. This program seeks to fund the development of transformational electrochemical energy storage technologies that will accelerate widespread electric vehicle adoption by dramatically improving their driving range, cost, and reliability. To achieve this long-term objective, this program aims to maximize specific energy and minimize cost of energy storage systems at the vehicle level. Central to this system-level approach is the use of robust design principles for energy storage systems. Robust design is defined as electrochemical energy storage chemistries and/or architectures (i.e. physical designs) that avoid thermal runaway and are immune to catastrophic failure regardless of manufacturing quality or abuse conditions. In addition, this program seeks multifunctional energy storage designs that use these robust storage systems to simultaneously serve other functions on a vehicle (for example, in the frame, body, and/or crumple zone), thus further reducing an energy storage syst em?s effective weight when normalized to the entire electric vehicle weight.

The goal of the Energy for Sustainability program is to support fundamental engineering research that will enable innovative processes for the sustainable production of electricity and fuels, and for energy storage. Processes for sustainable energy production must be environmentally benign, reduce greenhouse gas production, and utilize renewable resources. Research projects that stress molecular level understanding of phenomena that directly impacts key barriers to improved system level performance (e.g. energy efficiency, product yield, process intensification) are encouraged. Proposed research should be inspired by the need for economic and impactful conversion processes. All proposals should include in the project description, how the proposed work, if successful, will improve process realization and economic feasibility and compare the proposed work against current state-of-the-art. Highly integrated multidisciplinary projects are encouraged.

While geothermal power is an attractive potential source for sustainable energy production, the high heat temperature requirements (typically >150?C) of most geothermal capture systems constrain geographic distribution and economic viability of geothermal energy production. Advancement of strategic material or mineral recovery aims to address this limitation. By partnering with geothermal and mineral industry stakeholders to develop additional revenue streams from brines, the economic viability of geothermal projects will increase while also allowing for increased geographic diversity of this clean, round-the-clock energy source. Rare earths and strategic minerals are essential for modern industry, especially clean-energy technologies, but are subject to supply risk in the face of ever-increasing demand. As an example, consumer uses of lithium batteries have soared over the last decade, powering everything from electric cars to tablets to cell phones. Global demand for lithium carbonate is expected to exceed 250,000 tons by 2017?a 60% increase over current usage. As demand grows in this burgeoning market, a reliable supply of critical materials for advanced manufacturing technologies is a growing concern. This program aims to help alleviate this type of supply bottleneck. The Energy Department seeks up to ten 1-2 year feasibility and/or applied R&D projects that will lead to commercialized technologies. Geothermal mining of rare earth and near-critical metals are the focus of this research, with the intent to effectively lower the cost of geothermal energy production while diversifying and stabilizing the supply of critical materials for domestic industries.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency ? Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy, is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358), to support the creation of transformational energy technologies and systems through funding and managing Research and Development (R&D) efforts. Originally chartered in 2007, the Agency was first funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The mission of ARPA-E is to identify and fund research to translate science into breakthrough energy technologies that are too risky for the private sector and that, if successfully developed, will create the foundation for entirely new industries. Successful projects will address at least one of ARPA-E?s two Mission Areas: 1. Enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in: a. reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; b. reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and c. improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors. 2. Ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies.

Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that stem from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity. The goals of the SaTC program are aligned with theFederal Cybersecurity Research and Development Strategic Plan (RDSP) and the National Privacy Research Strategy (NPRS) to protect and preserve the growing social and economic benefits of cyber systems while ensuring security and privacy.The SaTC program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.

The Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) supports genome-scale researchthat addresses challenging questions of biological, societal and economic importance. PGRPencourages the development of innovative tools, technologies and resources that empower a broad plant research community to answer scientific questions on a genome-wide scale. Emphasis is placed on thescale and depth of the question being addressed and the creativity of the approach.Data produced by plant genomics should be usable, accessible, integrated across scales and of high impact across biology. Training, broadening participation, and career development are essential to scientific progress and shouldbe integrated in all PGRP-funded projects. Two funding tracks are currently available: 1. RESEARCH-PGR TRACK: Genome-scale plant research to address fundamental biological questions in biology, including economically important processes of societal importance. 2. TRTech-PGR TRACK: Tools, resources and technology breakthroughs that further enable functional plant genomics.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technology Office(GTO) Zonal Isolation for Manmade Geothermal Reservoirs funding opportunity announcement (FOA) supports early-stage development of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) tools and technologies, and will seek to improve the performance and economics of EGS systems by funding research in zonal isolation. Zonal isolation technologies can radically improve the performance and economics of EGS, or manmade geothermal reservoirs. These technologies provide the ability to target specific zones for stimulation activities, which can enable the command and control of fracture location and the economy of resources. In turn, this reduces development costs and operational risks associated with EGS development and promotes more power from fewer wellbores. Under this funding opportunity, GTO is interested in two topic areas: Topic 1 - Invention and Innovative Design of Zonal Isolation Technologies and Techniques for EGS Stimulation; and, Topic 2 - Adaption of Existing Zonal Isolation Technologies for EGS Stimulation. The projects selected from this FOA will aim to develop reliable zonal isolation tools and technologies that: * Present low risk to wellbore integrity or the conductivity of fractures; * Can operate at high-temperatures in corrosive, hard rock environments for extended periods of time; and * Withstand large pressure differentials.

Overall electricity access rate in Zambia currently stands at 31%. The situation is more challenging in rural areas where the access to electricity is less than 5%. This low access impedes Zambia's economic development. Increased access to electricity can increase economic growth and spur investment and trade, thereby reducing poverty. The national electricity grid will not be extended soon to most of the areas that currently lack electricity. Therefore, the increased utilization of other technologies, such as solar, offers an immediate and more realistic solution to the electricity access challenge. To support the increased utilization of solar technologies, there is a need to develop a cadre of trained solar professionals (installation and maintenance) throughout Zambia who can offer their services to both institutional and residential users. Furthermore, there are various projects to install solar technologies underway in support of different sector goals, such as health, education, water and sanitation. Supporting the development of expanded solar technology human capacity will ensure that solar technologies are installed, operating correctly, and well maintained. USAID/Zambia seeks information to help inform an intervention that is aimed at supporting a Zambia-based organization to provide regular training in solar technology installation and maintenance. The goal is to increase the use of solar technologies in Zambia via the development of these trained solar professionals.

The CRISP solicitation seeks to fund projects likely to produce new knowledge that can contribute to making ICI services more effective, efficient, dependable, adaptable, resilient, safe, and secure, taking into account the human systems in which they are embedded. Successful proposals are expected to study multiple infrastructures focusing on them as interdependent systems that deliver services, enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in infrastructure research. To meet the interdisciplinary criterion, proposals must broadly integrate across engineering, computer, information and computational science, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences.

The CRISP solicitation seeks to fund projects likely to produce new knowledge that can contribute to making ICI services more effective, efficient, dependable, adaptable, resilient, safe, and secure, taking into account the human systems in which they are embedded. Successful proposals are expected to study multiple infrastructures focusing on them as interdependent systems that deliver services, enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in infrastructure research. To meet the interdisciplinary criterion, proposals must broadly integrate across engineering, computer, information and computational science, and the social, behavioral and economic sciences.